We like a coffeehouse that's like our own living room, except with better ambience. A place where we can hang out, get comfortable, and not feel rushed or compelled to turn over our table until we're darn well ready to drain the last dregs from our cup and slide the bookmark back into our fat paperback. Pretty much everywhere has good coffee these days, so the blue ribbon gets awarded based on other factors. Significant pluses are a relaxed atmosphere, music that doesn't suck, maybe some board games, and most importantly really good food. We're enamored of Hampden's A Common Ground for all these reasons, but most especially the food. Above and beyond pedestrian coffeehouse salad and sandwich standards, A Common Ground turns out a small but ever-changing selection of inventive dishes. Homemade soups are invariably interesting (like chilled cucumber with yogurt in summer and curried lentil in winter), and the baked sweets--all made from scratch in-house--are the best around. There was this rhubarb crumble, once, warmed, with fresh whipped cream. . . . Oh, we could go on and on, but better yet we'll just go on over and see what the dessert case holds today.

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